Alex Baer: The Burro-Burrow Test: Too High a Hurdle?

Monday, 19 March 2012 15:18

There is a great story about an editor at UPI long ago, back in the 1970s, who inserted advice to journalists in a foreword to that organization's style guide for writers: A burro is an ass, a burrow is a hole in the ground: you are expected to know the difference between the two.

What great advice for Republican candidates vying for their party's coronation! These guys are already phenomenally low in wattage as illumination of any real issue goes, so, that simple advice should be hugely helpful to them, too!

Anyone claiming to be a journalist today should take a brush-up quiz on that one, too -- along with the mandate to keep opinion out of news, to just report the facts without endless analysis, rather than slip in personal notions, dressed up as The News. But then again, that Fox case says mainstream media's free to lie, so, what's the big deal -- opinion is much easier to cover and generate, for sure.

Candidates, meanwhile, always dress well, even though they have no place to go. Given their utter lack of destination when they begin to speak, and the no-confidence vote from Destiny on these bobbleheads, they could show up at the debates in plaid leisure suits, modeling the newly made garments, a leisure service product of La-Z-Pol, their home brand, calling them "Relaxed-Fit, Leisure Suits of the Rich and Famous." It would no doubt be a smash hit, boys -- just make sure they're dribble-proof, have super-strong zippers for self-containment of their puffed-up selves, and have a flap in the back, like on long, wooly underwear.